Monthly Archives: April 2020

LIPSTICK APPLIED TO FUTURE WISHES

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Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/tFkNnSAOm8w
or read his transcript below:
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LIPSTICK APPLIED TO FUTURE WISHES
 OR,
ROBOTS R US
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“Oh, man!” I mutter to myself as I turn the pages of my 1950′s Popular Science Magazine, way back when the mag is new and hot off the press.
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“Oh, boy!” I’m looking at all the swell illustrations of what life in the 21st Century will be like and, checking my Boy Scout wall calendar, I see there’s a good chance I’ll be alive to see these predictions come true.
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Just look at what life will be like in the year 2020, when I am elderly. Wall-sized television sets will entertain us by voice command, everybody will own a jet pack, colonies on the Moon will be readying their vehicles for Mars settlement, everybody will dress like Buck Rogers characters, and poverty will be a thing of the past.
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Oh, yes, there will be robots to serve our every need.
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Robots will do all the dirty little tasks and all the great big jobs for us, leaving us free to spend our time enjoying recreation, bettering our educations, improving our management of crimeless cities, reading all the great literature that workaholics in the 20th Century never could get around to.
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Well, here we are in 2020. Everything came true, but in grotesquely disguised ways. Be careful what you dream of.
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Jet packs exist in the form of drones. Everybody will have one any day now.
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Large TV sets and computers arrive packed with their own nightmarishly mistranslated instruction manuals which only 7th graders can understand.
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We can’t get up enough politics to settle the Moon, much less Mars, but we do fund satellites in large cluttered orbits.
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Many of us don’t read books anymore.
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We don’t dress like Buck Rogers, but we do love our week-long fashion trends…and isn’t that the cutest tattoo she’s wearing—wait, it might be a patterned stocking.
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Poverty is still poverty, but we put lipstick on it once in a while to make ourselves less conscious of it.
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And so on. The good, the bad and the ugly still exist side by side, but it’s all very shiny and disguised and, well, Modern.
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Then there’s the thing about robots.
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Robots serve us every moment of our lives. Computerized robotics run our refrigerators, toasters, alarm systems, automobiles, surveillance systems, communications networks, prisons, telemarketing companies, warfare readiness conglomerates, social media devices, city halls, political campaigns.
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Yep, robots have made us so comfortable that we are only faintly aware that, in order to earn that comfort, we have to obey these robots, wait patiently while they re-boot our machines, carefully follow their instructions, maintain and finance them. And the worst thing that can happen is for us to be without these creatures for even a moment. The horror!
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Where was I?
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Well where I am is in the midst of spending hours hoping my IT guy can repair my busted computer this week, sitting strained but quiet while my wife and son spend hours trying to make the streaming function on our television set work properly, hoping against hope that The Cloud doesn’t crash with all my writings and records thereon, crossing my fingers to boost the chances that a sunspot burst won’t destroy my flash drives and troves of word programs upon which I depend.
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I wait patiently and quietly for my robots to give me an all-clear signal so that life can get back to normal.
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Back in 1954, I’m putting down my Popular Science Magazine and picking up an Astounding Science Fiction Magazine, which weaves tales of robots that will take over the world and eventually do away with humans.
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Here in 2020, I’m becoming aware that the dominant population is now robotic, that we humans are the real robots, that at times robots act more fairly and justly than we do.
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A twist in time is all it took for humans to become slightly unnecessary
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© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

 Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

A SOGGY DAY IN ANY TOWN

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Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/yXKU8ka3mRs

or read the transcript below:

A SOGGY DAY IN ANY TOWN

“Flash flood warning for parts of…”

A robotic voice, its syllables clear but raggedly paced and unemphasized, interrupts life in this Deep South village for a few seconds. The voice is reporting the fact that rain is a-coming.

Lightning and its rapidly tag along thunder seek my attention.

Funny how fright and fear constantly shift their subjects. One day I’m afraid of the pandemic, another day I worry about tornadoes, next moment I might be obsessing over where my meals will come from in a few weeks—or my toilet paper.

And, with enough idle time on my hands, I even wonder: just where is my waist? It used to be Coke-bottled-defined. I knew where to tighten my belt. As I morph into someone shaped like the Pillsbury dough boy, I lose my waist. Oh, well, not to worry. There will be something else to fret over any minute now.

In order to battle the forces of worry and concern, to distract myself, to make up a cheery life in order to occlude the dreary feary life, I stay busy. 

I am on my way to the bookstore to spend the day cataloging and arranging, preparing for the post-apocalyptic world we hope will save and savor us.

The silence of barren streets is somewhat comforting. It tells me everybody’s in this together. It allows me to see the town itself, unencumbered by other vehicles, other denizens. For a moment there seems to be no future.

But the future always hovers, reminding me that my world is not a world worth having without the presence of other people.

And, sure enough, I pass by the father of the owner of Pop’s Deli outside his daughter’s diner, smiling and waving a box of door-to-door meals he’s about to deliver. I long for the soon-to-be day when I can sit within and see Heather’s sweet face as she chats and cooks and produces a tasty omelet while I read my morning paper and scan newsprint for signs of hope.

I pass by a few stragglers, roll down the window and wish them a good morning, make them smile despite the hard times. And here we all go forward, one asphalt stripe after another, one step prior to the next step.

Each day I park in the nearby deck, punch the down button with my elbow, and gaze out a huge window, waiting for the elevator to awaken. The deserted hollowed-out skyscraper across the street sports many broken windows and seems bereft of life at first glance.

But after months of periodically staring with nothing better to do, I notice that this lifeless structure is perhaps not yet dead and gone.

From one high-up gap-toothed window, a makeshift shade flaps in the breeze. Some days it is not there, other times it is crooked but present. This means that someone is occupying upper-story space. Someone is residing under circumstances I can only imagine.

Now and then, when fright and fear encroach, when my guard is down, I think about this ghastly ghostly building and what might be going on out of sight of passersby, out of sight of the absentee owners of this property. I wonder whether I’m the only person who knows that, high up, a life or lives may be going on.

And when fright and fear gain the upper hand, I wonder whether I’ll someday be looking for space like this to hide from the horrors.

But never mind. I have books to cherish and customer promises to keep. And the wonderful ability to brush aside all this depressive meandering in order to nurture hope and family.

There is no other journey worth considering

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

 Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

 

 

 

NO LOITERING VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

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Catch Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/Aki0_01dqFU

or read his transcript below:

NO LOITERING VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

This sign at the post office is fastened securely to a brick-facade column. As I park and prepare to tote my bag of books-to-be-mailed, I take another look.

NO LOITERING VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED

Does this mean that it’s ok to be a loitering violator? That maybe a fast-moving, aggressive violator is the kind authorities would prefer to pursue?

I guess punctuation would help. Instead of all-cap letters of equal font, there are other ways to more clearly express whatever it is the sign-maker is trying to get across.

What about

NO LOITERING! VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED!

We’ve seen this sign so many times that it is invisible to all but natural-born editors and proofers like yours truly.

Besides, sitting on the curb right under the sign is a disheveled man who is soliciting money from all passersby. The city’s ordinance against panhandling is ignored, as is the LOITERING sign.

I’m making no judgments here. It’s acceptable by me for the man to solicit. It’s also quite in the scheme of things for the city’s sign shop to produce metallic embossed signage that no-one notices.

It just seems like busy work—signmaking for no purpose, and panhandling rules that are unenforced.

The ten-year-old inside me thinks it would be fun to produce and install official-looking signs, just to see how long it would take for “officials” to spot and remove them.

What about signs like

PROSECUTORS WILL BE VIOLATED

or

VIOLATORS WILL BE PERSECUTED

or

LOITERERS WILL BE LATTE’D

or

PROSECUTORS MUST NOT LOITER

I agree that this little whimsical exercise of mine is somewhat time-wasting, but there are much worse things I could be doing than giving my imagination a workout, in these times of what-do-I-do-next-that-would-be-productive-or-at-least-fun

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

 Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

WHERE SILENCE REIGNS, ALL IS CALM AND BRIGHT

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Hear Jim Reed’s new edition of Red Clay diary: https://youtu.be/CB5lUy3UaKQ

or read his transcript below:

I round the corner of the granite building, walking briskly on the way to work.

At the corner, Reverend Chris the security guard stands solid as a rock. He’s the overseer for the attorneys who occupy the structure next door to my shop.

Today, Chris is not the happy cheerer-upper I’m accustomed to. Today, he is keeping his solitary distance. He is bemasked and gloved, but he is still there to protect this corner of a city block. He is protecting himself from me. He is protecting me from himself. Like the Lone Rearranger, he is comforting.

Chris’ mask seems to mute him, as if his words would bounce back to him, unheard.

I wave and smile and attempt to delegate cheer to him.

That’s the way things are these days on the tumbleweed streets of the viral town.

LOOKING FOR COMFORT AND COMPASSION, I DIG THROUGH THE RED CLAY DIARY AND FIND JOY IN THIS ENTRY…I hope you do, too:

WHERE SILENCE REIGNS, ALL IS CALM AND BRIGHT

“Where words fail, music speaks.”

 

 

–Hans Christian Andersen

That seems true, Hans. The opposite also seems true. What’s that about?

In other words, one might say:

Where words fail, music speaks.

Where music fails, words sing.

Where silence reigns, all is calm and bright.

The world is so full of highly pumped sound, over-the-top words, whispers corrupted into shouts, noise filling every possible solitude. So full. So loud. So chock-full.

Do you recall what non-sound sounds like?

Do you ever listen to the quiet?

Do you long for a Cone of Silence to descend over you once in a while?

Would you like to spend an hour inside a bubble of solitude?

Some will say, “Yes, bring me a reflective, soundless interval, away from everything that is being pushed at me. Make me a non-consumer for an hour. Pretend I’m not anywhere you can get at me for a while. Eventually, I may return to you refreshed and invigorated.”

Others will say, “Whattayatalkingabout? Who wants to spend one minute without music and commercials and texting and tweeting and continuous conversation and television talk and unreality shows? Who wants to be bored? Silence is disturbing!”

Still others will say, “There’s no solution. Sequential, aggressive, repetitive sound is everywhere and impossible to escape. Everybody embraces it, so it must be right.”

And those who are up to the brim will say, “There is a solution. I can take charge any time I wish. I can stop abruptly, pull the plug, remove the batteries, throw the circuit-breaker, run and hide from the wordy and the wired, close my eyes to the horrorsayers and vulgarians, resist the temptation to see and hear the Next Thing Up.”

Looks like three alternatives are presenting themselves to us.

Ready to chose? What’s behind Option Number One. Or Two. Or Three?”

And am I prepared to open the door and take the consequences?

Here I go

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

WEBSITE

 Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY